


The Light Inside You Cannot See

by SmudgeInktopus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, IN SPACE!, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith pretends to understand general relativity, Minor Keith/Shiro (Voltron), Not Really Character Death, Past Character Death, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Supportive Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 12:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15949853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmudgeInktopus/pseuds/SmudgeInktopus
Summary: Keith just needed some space, that's all. That's why he took the Black Lion out by himself.It's not because everyone is worried about him, or because he can't stand sitting around not doing anything about it, or because it's still too strange not seeing him around the castle anymore.It's not.





	The Light Inside You Cannot See

He never thought space would be this dark. Back on Earth, the stars practically lit up the sky, but out here they were so far away that it didn’t even matter. Space travel wasn’t what he expected, either. It was easier to pass time in the castle. Slashing drones on the training deck, watching Pidge think up new algorithms, helping Hunk in the kitchen, even listening to Lance practice his bad jokes was better than being in the Lion by himself. There was always a distraction close by.

But in the Lion, with no one occupying the same gravity, it was easy to be lonely. The stars never moved, no matter the distance traveled, and tracking them with his eyes made tuning out the universe so simple, it was almost scary. Then, when he would come back to himself, the lights had shifted, had fallen into new patterns that he couldn’t recognize. Only then would he remember that they were moving ceaselessly forward.

At the Garrison, when he would sneak out and take the occasional nighttime joyride, those stars felt so close, like he could reach out, palm catching the phantom weight of the air, and skim his fingers across the speckled night sky. They would feel cold, he imagined, like moon-cooled pebbles bumping the desert sand. The books said they burned hot as nuclear reactors. It was hard for him to fathom that kind of heat. After all, space was cold, so why couldn’t stars be, too? And how could they know if they were so far away? How could anyone know anything about something so distant? Could they even check them all? How long would that take, how many light-years? Would they have time?

Would he even be there?

The cool purple glow from the Black Lion’s interior flickered once in the dark, a brief stutter in its usual constant light. He opened his mouth to report the abnormality over the comms, but stopped when he remembered that he was alone. The rest of the paladins were in the castle, whittling away their down time in between missions. Coran was repairing parts of the ship that were damaged during their last battle. Allura was probably talking to her mice or something. And Keith was here, sitting slumped in the cockpit of the Black Lion, begging the universe to turn right side up again. It was futile and pointless, just like every time he stared at the radar display and waited for the ping to sound.

So he’d stopped staring at the radar and stared out at the stars instead. One of his teachers at the Garrison said that when light travels such long distances through space, it’s actually traveling on an immense curve because of gravity, and that that curve bends time, in a way, so when you see a star, you’re seeing light that actually exists far in the past since it takes so long to get to your eyes. Which means that all the stars in the sky have already burned out. Not for the first time, Keith wondered what that teacher would say now that he had visited some of those supposedly dead stars himself, had touched down on their surfaces, had flown his Lion through their gaseous cores and witnessed their implosions with his own two eyes. He probably wouldn’t believe him. Not a lot of people did, at the Garrison.

But Shiro…

Keith drew in a full breath of recycled air and held it in is lungs for a second too long before releasing it in a rushed huff. He leaned forward, hands gripping both throttles in front of him, and closed his eyes. He should have tried to convince the Lion to take someone else, someone like Allura. She knew how to be a leader like Shiro, how to inspire people. She didn’t get scared like he did. Now that he was bonded with the Black Lion, he felt it all the time. Like there was something hovering in the corner of his eye, trying to get his attention, making him paranoid, afraid to look because if he did and one of his friends got hurt while he was looking the other way –

Did Shiro’s grip on the throttle tighten when he was scared, too? Keith was far past thinking of him as superhuman, at least in the literal sense. He knew Shiro felt afraid, had doubts, hesitated. Just like him.

Oh, God, it was like his mom all over again, but this time it was worse. Worse than his dad, too? How horrible must he be if he thinks that, maybe, it just might be? He knew the face that left him better than his own. The face that smiled when they walked the line between death and danger, pulling each other back from the brink every time. Keith opened his eyes, his gaze drifting to the radar again before snapping to a random star. Or was it a planet? He could never tell.

There is was again, that flicker. It was just a blip, quick as a blink, but it was there. The Lion hummed as it sat idle in the vast expanse of infinite dark, offering no comment. Keith danced his fingers over the various holographic screens looking for any sign of a system malfunction, checking the power supply, life support, internal lighting, even the heating system. All clear.

He huffed out a scoff. Leave it to Shiro to give him the Lion that tested your patience before telling you what was wrong with it. He closed his eyes again and imagined it: Shiro, standing beside him, hand on his shoulder, not the Galra-made one, looking down at him with pride as his mouth moved, soundless, giving instructions he could not hear.

The tightness in his chest, the reason he had ventured out into space on his own this time, the one that had been there since the battle with Zarkon, snapped. The force of it bent Keith’s spine, bowed his head, and kicked his lungs, sending a hiccuping breath careening out of his tightening throat. After pushing so many people away, after making sure they saw him the way he wanted, as a loner, a kid who didn’t need anyone or anything to stand on his own, as someone who wasn’t missing pieces after being left by everyone he’d ever loved, Keith finally let himself feel the loss of the biggest piece of his heart.

 

 

The purple glow blinked once again, but Keith, head in his hands, didn’t see it. He didn’t see a lot of things. He couldn’t, really. But that wasn’t his fault. Nothing that had happened was his fault, and just because he couldn’t see that didn’t make it any less true. If only he could tell him that right now, when he most needed to hear it. But he didn’t exactly have the means to do that. It would require having a physical form, after all. All he was able to do right now was manifest a basic, glitchy image of his body mined from his consciousness and the Black Lion’s memory, one that no one could hear or see or feel no matter how hard he tried.

“Keith,” Shiro sighed. “I’m sorry.”

You can’t touch people when you’re dead. Or, well, whatever he was. Disembodied? If he was a ghost, he couldn’t think of a better place to haunt than his Lion. At least he could still protect him. Protect all of them.

The screen on the far right of the cockpit displayed the temperature, which, over the past twenty seconds, had risen two degrees Fahrenheit.

Shiro crouched in front of Keith, their faces level. Keith let his tears fall, one hand moving to wipe them away before curling into his hair and holding tight. There wasn’t much Shiro could do, but at the very least, he could be there for the one person who has never stopped saving him. He reached out, careful not to let himself pass through Keith, and covered his hands with his own. It was strange to be able to see Keith move under his grip and feel nothing, not even the worn leather of his gloves.

“I can’t do this without you,” Keith muttered, his voice strained from the effort of holding himself together.

He knew he couldn’t hear him. He tried anyway. “You don’t have to, Keith.”

Dropping his hands, Shiro stood and stepped up to the wide window that served as his Lion’s eyes. His eyes? The distinction didn’t really matter; they were practically one in the same now. He stared out into the stars, eyes bouncing from one to another until he had scanned the full breadth of the sky. Shiro turned to look at Keith over his shoulder. A small sad smile flickered onto his face.

“They’re not as far away as you’d think.”

 

Keith looked up. The stars were different again. This time, a brilliant violet nebula glowed amid the new constellations, the center of the cloud a bright white, its reflection filling the Black Lion’s cockpit with pale starlight.

“Tomorrow,” he said, and revved the throttle with both hands, turning the Lion back toward the castle. “I’ll bring you home.”

Behind him, out of sight but never out of mind, Shiro laid a phantom hand on Keith’s shoulder and asked his Lion to keep his family safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by rou-tan-tan's [amazing art!](http://rou-tan-tan.tumblr.com/post/176943592288/i-cant-do-this-without-you-i-could-not-stop)


End file.
